by Jason
Amidst all of the calls for healthcare "reform" (i.e. Federal take-over), you frequently hear people say that the quality of care in the US lags behind many other countries. A recent Wall Street Journal article begs to differ.
The article points out that the study on which the ranking is based is dubious at best. One of the most damning things to me is that the WHO "study" did not even base its claims on health data!
An even bigger problem was shared by all five of these factors: The underlying data about each nation generally weren't available. So WHO researchers calculated the relationship between those factors and other, available numbers, such as literacy rates and income inequality. Such measures, they argued, were linked closely to health in those countries where fuller health data were available. Even though there was no way to be sure that link held in other countries, they used these literacy and income data to estimate health performance.
So, instead of actually using real healthcare data for all of their metrics, they extrapolated data from only arguably related factors.
This is another instance of "fun with math" used to justify what is really no more than a power grab. The worst part is that Democrats can't even be honest with themselves. They claim that they are trying to "fix" healthcare and make it better for everyone. But how will taxing the populace into destitution and degrading the health system help anyone? This will happen as good doctors quit, people line up for free visits for non-issues, and all private medicine fails while trying to compete with the government over-taxing and under-cutting them. So, since the actual outcome will be detrimental to all people, and any reasonable person can see the signs and the historic evidence from other countries, then they must be lying about their real goals.
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2 comments:
Even where some numbers are available, there are various very fundamental problems.
1) Number based on "patient satisfaction" are useless for cross-country comparisons. A relatively rich guy in India will often report he is super-satisfied with the health he gets, and yet it may be no different from what a middle-class person gets elsewhere and reports being just okay with. Expectations play too high a role to make comparisons useful.
2) Looking for objective measures, people often gravitate to life-expectancy. It is a common criticism that the U.S. spends so much on health-care but has a life-expectancy just about the same as most rich countries (in fact a little lower, if takes a year or two to be meaningful). The problem with this is that much of the money in healthcare is *not* being spent on prolonging life.
For instance, many older people need cataract operations. People who are on Medicaid are allowed to get the conventional lenses-replacement. After this surgery, they can see perfectly fine is they wear prescription glasses. Not a big inconvenience, right? Well, if one has Medicare instead of Medicaid, it will pay for a lens that will adjust, so that one does not have to wear glasses. Folks on Medicaid can pay an extra $2000 - $3000 to "upgrade". The additional money does not show up in life-expectancy.
It is the same when an older pill for allergies is replaced with one that makes one less drowsy, or when a new type of surgery achieves the same bodily result as the old one, except that one can get back to work 2 weeks earlier.
A huge number of improvements in healthcare are of this type, and simply do not show up in the life-expectancy numbers.
3) Then, of course, one has the problem of averaging across groups within a country. It obscures various facts that would better point on to the causes.
R.T.
Good points.
~Jason
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